R A K
random acts of kindness,
good part of human(s)character
reaching out on display,
random acts in coffee shops,
random acts in a drive through,
random acts at Christmas,
random acts at the gas pump, lol
okay cheerleaders step to the back
                 we are done with you.

What
is it called,
when a thief,
a perp, a vandal,
takes advantage of
a naive traveler, and in a moment,
          unravel, a charitable plan,
           a belonging, longing to
              be with ITS rightful owner,
                maybe a special chair or bike,
                  that was only meant for one person
                    of challenge for change.

Strange?
Anyone find it strange,
that someone would steal and burn another's belongings (Saskatchewan)
slash some young men's vehicle tires and etch an autograph their van (Winnipeg)
"Have a good trip home boys"
I won't list the remainder, other to say I have done my research and there
isn't a province or state or territory, where this is not in the news...

Yes some others step up from time to time and replace all the goods,
but you can't replace the scar on the memory, gestures do help with healing ( I hope )
but you can't replace the a hard drive beyond use, with third degrees burns,
beyond nerve deep.

Yes others show their heart and make it right, Thank you,
I wish, I pray against the spirit of dismay from
these other random acts of spite, random acts of cowardice, random acts of violence,
random acts of greed, one or more Disgusting Excrement of Evil Doers , (DEED)
like stealing a purse from a senior citizen who survived the war,
to die in a fall when pushed hard by a snatcher of purses and lives.

Lip service by local authorities, "be aware of your surroundings", too true
Crimes of opportunity, and anonymously, an idiot gains immunity,
but what to do:
being indignant does not help but keep reading,
maybe just(ice) maybe send them all North, building survival cairns
and airfields across the tundra and there they
might discover the spirit of wonder
of human kind(ness), through random acts;
(like horseflies, mosquitoes, wolves, polar bears, Cariboo in mating season,
swamps that suddenly appear and then they disappear, there are more, but what a bore)
they will have memories of Aura Borealis
                                           with out malice.
they may see the herds and appreciate,
                      wildlife in its natural state.
they may or may not make it home, either way
      they will be able to write a poem.
Or write a better rant about thorns from Devil's Club
and pus.  Or now know the hardship they did cause
                                                           ­      stop to pause, and
do a random act of kindness to make up for another's loss.

From the heart.


©DWE062013

Late spring. Early morning.
Horseflies in my dream,
dissonant church bells, legless pigeons

I wake to the light’s sharp angle
that cuts this day open.
A breeze stretches its wrap

Lying here, dawn is brief
like a banner slowly raised
then dropped abruptly

Rising from bed
I slump
a prisoner waiting for a beating
The chilled air, a sword
stuck into my skin

Through the blinds
a snap of sun
my eyes rollback
colors pop

I stand barefoot
and become the sum
of a legless pigeon
a horsefly’s faint buzz
dissonant bells

I think of my dream
how it called me
inward
closer to the core
a caravan of pine coffins
lined up in the streets
a future template

Suddenly, church bells,

a fly dead on the sill,

a mournful pigeon’s coo.

--------------------------------------------

from my sixth book-length manuscript

©dah / dahlusion 2015
all rights reserved

"Horseflies Pigeons Coffins"
was first published in  'Secrets and Dreams Anthology'
(Kind Of A Hurricane Press)

Deep down a rabbit’s hole
Lies a strange and wonderful place
Where there is no such thing as time
Or sanity or space

You fall into a room
Where there’s a drink that can make you small
A door so very little
And a cake that can make you tall

A garden where flowers can talk
Where a smart mouthed caterpillar make smoke rings
An island where dodos live
And where birds and sea creatures sing

Down the road live a hatter and a hare
Their cakes and tea are the very best
Both so mad and very insane
Asking why a raven is like a writing desk

In a palace lives a Queen
Who is very short tempered
And with just four little words
She can have your head dismembered

A yard where they use flamingoes and hedgehogs
To play a game of crocket
And forests where bread-and-butterflies
And rocking-horseflies come out and play

Up a tree lives the Cheshire Cat
Who slowly disappears
Telling a young, blond haired girl
Almost everyone is mad here

In this place, it makes sense
That what it is it wouldn’t be
And what it wouldn’t be, it would
Logic of childish insanity

So you are cordially invited
To this place so eccentric and grand
Where nonsense is your guide
To this kingdom called Wonderland

And so it comes-
all at once-
like a swarm of horseflies,
plump and ugly,
filling the space around
the air that I breathe.
They are persistent, quiet creatures-
all but a low hum of a noise-
stabbing and striking,
then, returning for me
once more.

They find me
wandering peacefully
alongside the riverbank
while fresh, clean air fills my lungs
and the warm sun glistens off
the whites of my beaming teeth.
But, these horseflies are poison
infecting me with the vile they hold.

And suddenly,
I am so crowded
I'm sure I'll suffocate by the air
they are swarming around in.
Then suddenly, I'm so sure that
the river will swallow me in an instant.
And I am sure to drown in it's waters-
my own body controlled by
where it's current takes me.
So sure- that the sun will go dark
and the warmth will but be all gone.
The tranquil of this riverbank
transforming into the remnants of
chaos and disaster.

Until, at last, I recall that this poison
is just that-
Poison.
It's all but a temporary illusion
by an infected reality.
For I still walk alongside the riverbank.
I can still feel the air in my lungs.
And the warmth of the sun still embraces me-
it's light still shimmering in my eyes
and on the whites of my beaming teeth.

anxiety guillotine, hanging
from a thread, suspended above
my sunburnt neck. i'm utterly spent.
another day, back bent in the stocks,
latched in for the Kafka-esque:

carnivalesque body-horror.
shovel white-hot daggers
beneath finger-nail keratin.
bite my tongue off with police-tape teeth.
sadist, savor my godless screams.

drawn and quartered. send my limbs
to the map's furthest corners.
horseflies' aborted eggs
nest amidst maggot-infested
intestines, dangerously dangling.

turn my frown upside down.
stick a razor-blade
in my mouth
and pull 'till i grin
like chelsea.

interned within an unmarked grave,
save for the cairn made from the same stones
i flung myself upon from a great height. a wave
dashed against the rocks, endlessly rebuffed—
the sea's clairvoyance couldn't budge the boulder.

4/12/2016
"Rappelez-vous l'objet que nous vîmes, mon âme,
Ce beau matin d'été si doux:
Au détour d'un sentier une charogne infâme
Sur un lit semé de cailloux?"

"My love, do you recall the object which we saw,
That fair, sweet, summer morn!
At a turn in the path, a foul carcass
On a gravel strewn bed?"
Charles Baudelaire

I sat on the mossy footstool
that lied by the brook-
I had to really open my ears
to hear the soft regurgitation
coming from the clear muddy water, gliding over the slate,
piled up
the road, the one I drove on that one day we snuck out,
was placed gently beside it,
uptop a little cliff,
I felt this a beatific metaphor.

The air felt amorphous,
held a quality I couldn't quite
put my finger on.
and then I saw a tree,

a crooked one
who had seemed to grow
on the bank of the creek
because life, it seems, imitates art.

Its trunk dipped
until it ever so slightly grazed the water
its elm fingers
almost

almost.
I smiled when I saw this,
for it gave me hope.
I likened myself to the horseflies and new
tadpoles that flittered,

seraphic in quality,
borne with the quality of new life- the innocent quality
the one that just made me feel tainted, the more I surrounded myself with it.

The Friday afternoons on the avenue, with its port wine air
and this bubbling black slate brook

are the only places
that innocence lives-
if I had realized how quiet
the soft gargling of the cherub water was

I'd have stopped the car
and baptized ourselves
In it.

Velveteen butterflies sail into strawberry way , strike a pose against the meditative , sunny disposition of the coming May
Harlequin horseflies and Bumblebee jesters
Pear bloom ballet , Mayfly soloist , interpretive Ferns are quite dashing in the Alabama breeze , Wood Thrush dancers and Mourning Dove romantics cooing in the Honey Locust trees
Madame April's storybook of Springtide scenes
and fairytale dreams ...

Today I saw
a small white pebble
suddenly
burst open and
expell small specks
of multi-colored dust;
I guess it just
couldn't hold it
or help it.

And then I
trapped
a small black flea
beneath my fingernail;
it fought
and struggled but
I could hold it
and it
was helpless.

Today
I watched
as the sun
baked an
ant's bed warm and roasty;
it even smelled like
burning ants when
I bent
and looked more closely

Then I imagined
a black widow spider
fighting
off
three preying Manti,
they were winning at first
but she carries
the gift
of the Magi.

Today
I watched a
few horseflies give
fervent chase
to one another;
I'm not sure but
from what I saw
I think one was
the other one's
brother.

Today
I saw two flirting butterflies,
one gently kissing another
I bent my ear
so I could hear
what they were whispering
to each other

But
I could not hear the words
she said
by the wind
they were covered,
but in his eyes
I read his
soft reply:

I know
you don't belong
to me but
I will love you
like no other.

And if today were a song
I would sing all day long.
Are perfect days real?
Certainly, I would say.
I got all of my work done and
Turned in without crying
And I had a double lunch date
With my friends and my
Beautiful girlfriend at
My favorite sushi place.
After we had milkshakes
And went swimming.
We kissed so much that
I just kept falling in love
over and over for her again.
She rode on my back in the pool
While I made stupid jokes about
Shrek and screamed about
Those **** horseflies.
With every second that went by,
I couldn't help but to think
"Wow, today is such a wonderful day".
Honestly, I had an awful week.
Last night I started crying because
Of how stressed I really was
And the nagging feeling of failure
Was starting to become a friend to me
And I was scared that I was just going to
Tumble blindly into the oblivion that is my future.
But finally my breathing is back to normal,
And my head isn't filled with the amount of
Papers due this week or how many math corrections I have done.
It is now filled with all the love in the world
And you can it on my face again,
I am just so happy.

Fourscore downtime rhymes
We've heard this **** 10,000 times
A word worth saying for once, lost perception
Of the chambers of the heart correction
Hot peppers on tongue connections, still puddle reflections
The drip-drip-drop staccato beat, of heart of rain
Insane template premeditate the tempo of pierced cortex
The reflex action, muscle contraction, fight
Right overcoming light like eclipse of the sun, one & done
Then plunging into night, moths circling, sun holes
The way a nail goes head deep, pour & seep through the
pores that define the metaphors you apply
the way a nail, crushed by a hammer, pulls free
Free, like I can be, if I simply believe, in self, selfless
the hammer pulls, I have felt less
over this inebriation
But why, why, why this hesitation?
I talk in twisted rhyme, above my station
a reclamation of who I used to be
Be, and I see the exclamation point, peculiar & parallel
Folding space and my perception, to anoint
Lines spit like whole milk, the cut of pine is rougher than snake wood  
Eloquence unravels like old silk, spits cinders and
The sand in our hands counts counter clockwise
We're down the river, deep and twisting,
swatting Horseflies
A toad in his abode snacking on HORSEFLIES, unblinking
predator eyes affixed to the crossed crucifix of
called on cobwebs to untangle thought, lost
a spider with his silk cut, hollow gut
nothing caught today, arachnid love

As with mosquitos, horseflies
and most bloodsucking parasites
he was spawned in stagnant water
to explore the world of man on evil wings
she had wanted a man who
would love, would care
but soon she would discover
he owned to neither of those things
Rather, he bit into her as would a mosquito
raising a sickness deep within
then as a leech he bled her
dry 'til she was a husk of pallid skin
he spawned in her a ****** dysmorphia
so that she, when he finally left, could only feel
a kind of distorted euphoria
that allowed her to shut herself off from a world
that she saw as a stagnant pool

blue ***** dig caves
under sandy rocks
and the smell of salt
boats tied to docks

the gulls swoop low
to catch a bite
and plovers wade
as horseflies bite

footprints make a trail
boys and girls building castles
with shovel and pail
green foamy seas

lined with cockleshells
and balmy breeze
driftwood and seaweed
tangled around my toes

and knees
tanning woman lying
on colored towels
as sunburned baby

in sagging diaper howls
coconut oil
permeates the air
as old folks sit

on navy beach chairs
bags of chips and kegs of beer
and hairy chested men
that often stare

a bunch of teens punch
a volleyball over
a long-stretched net
my nape breaks out

in a sweat
riding surfs on boogie boards
dripping ice-cream cones
sandpipers call this their home

as they lie on nests in the dunes
while radios blare 80's tunes
life's troubles out of reach
a typical day at the beach

in bigotry and riots
break out in the street
when leaders betray
all is staged
war is waged

When the ocean is covered
in debris and litter is
strewn on the beach
people swarm
over you like horseflies
men recklessly die

When the land is covered
in hypocrisy
statues fall like leaves
signs sit on every lawn
men aren't men
men are pawns

of stone. As sand slips through
a clenched hand. With nothing
to grasp onto but a fist of lies,

whirling around horseflies, biting
tight bronzed thighs. The welts are
the size of dimes. You can't melt

stone casting a light on the face
of a rock.  A flock of gulls,
circling for crumbs scattered on

the shore. This wore the azure
down till the red drowned into
the brine. Lost over the horizon

as a herd of bison on the African
planes, after the November
rain.

was covered with as many people
as rocks. My man didn’t take off
his shoes or socks. The horseflies were
teaming up and taking turns biting the crap

out of me. I almost jumped out of my bikini
from their ******. I swear they were the size
of ships. I dropped a ***** nip. And it was
floating in my ice-tea. Bopping up and down

as a buoy. The waves were as strong and
came on like a jilted *****. They banged me hard
into the shore. High tide and the temperature
eighty-five made for a crowded beach. None were

wearing masks. Don’t preach! I needed this
as I did the nip! My vacation is put on hold like
a toilet paper roll. And I’m old waiting.